The
Therapeutic Institutional Abuse Program is a subsidiary of the Internations’
Justice Federation’s Institutional Abuse Memorial programs.
The Therapeutic Institutional Abuse Program is a pilot program designed
to address the flaws of government redress programs. The program entails
a holistic approach to therapy and includes an intensive year-long
schedule to assist survivors in reaching healing and finding closure
to lifelong issues of abuse.

The Therapeutic Institutional Abuse Program is committed to peaceful
and non-violent change. With due consideration to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights, we the members herein recognize that
no individual human majority or minority can be expendable in the
cause of theory or policy.

The history of Canada is not just a history of glorious triumphs
over an immense and frequently hostile wilderness. It is also the
story of mistakes, actions and failures to act by individuals and
by institutions, often with the noblest of intentions. Such has
been the case with organizations and the care practices of the criminal
justice system, the foster care system, the child protection services,
the residential institutions for native and other children, the
youth detention centres, and religious and government-sponsored
orphanages. Furthermore, records indicating exactly what actions,
inaction, omissions and commissions really occurred must be obtained
so those mistakes can be atoned for and corrected.

In Canada, over the last decade, over 5,210 victims filed claims
of physical and sexual abuse, cultural eradication, sterilizations,
and genocide, involving over 72 residential institutions. Many children
also died due to the severe negligence and physical abuse they received
at the hands of their caregivers.

The Therapeutic Institutional Abuse Program recognizes that many
lives are still being claimed by institutional abuse. Subsequently,
many survivor groups continue to surface. The Therapeutic Institutional
Abuse Program, working in conjunction with the International Institutional
Child Abuse Memorial, aspires to unite all groups, both aboriginal
and non-aboriginal.

Institutional abuse is only now beginning to surface in Canada
and other countries around the world. This abuse continues to wreak
havoc among members of society. Memories of traumatic experiences
continue to haunt many victims long after they have left the institutions.
The effects of abuse are strongly reflected in our corrective social
programs and crime rates. We lost, and continue to lose, many of
these victims to homelessness, poverty, violence, crime and suicide.
Today more than ever, criminal and civil claims of institutional
and systematic abuse are pending across the world. The issue of
institutional abuse is fast becoming an international crisis. Therefore,
Internations’ Justice Federation recognizes that reproach
of the current redress is urgent.

Internations’ Justice Federation further recognizes that
the dialogue of mediation between the relevant parties is failing.
Subsequently, Internations’ Justice Federation seeks further
to engage mediation in the debate of redress programs affecting
the various institutions, governments, survivors, victims and the
community.